Our History

We must never forget!

There is a move that portrays the Stonewall Uprising as a “GAY” we cannot let them erase us.

In 1969, the night of the Stonewall riot, was a very hot, muggy night. We were in the Stonewall [bar] and the lights came on. We all stopped dancing. The police came in.

They had gotten their payoff earlier in the week. But Inspector Pine came in-him and his morals squad-to spend more of the government's money.

We were led out of the bar and they cattled us all up against the police vans. The cops pushed us up against the grates and the fences. People started throwing pennies, nickels, and quarters at the cops.

And then the bottles started. And then we finally had the morals squad barricaded in the Stonewall building, because they were actually afraid of us at that time. They didn't know we were going to react that way.

We were not taking any more of this shit. We had done so much for other movements. It was time.

It was street gay people from the Village out front-homeless people who lived in the park in Sheridan Square outside the bar-and then drag queens behind them and everybody behind us. The Stonewall Inn telephone lines were cut and they were left in the dark.
Workers World’s Leslie Feinberg interviews Sylvia Rivera

Another person who was there speaks up…

Trans Icon Miss Major: 'We've Got to Reclaim Who the Fuck We Are'
Stonewall Uprising* veteran Miss Major Griffin-Gracy offers fighting words from a lifetime of advocacy.
Broadly
By Zackary Drucker
November 21, 2018

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy is a Stonewall Uprising veteran civil rights advocate from Chicago who has confronted the institutionalization and imprisonment of transgender women throughout her life. Miss Major moved to NYC in the early 1960s, and was a sex worker for years out of necessity. In New York, she met Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, who played key roles in the Stonewall riots. But Miss Major wasn’t around for the years following the Stonewall riots; she was sentenced to five years in prison after an altercation with the police.

Miss Major has spent forty years in activism, fighting against the prison system, racism, and transphobia in the United States. She is an award winning leader in social justice, and recently founded the organization House of Griffin-Gracy in Little Rock, Arizona.

She is now living there…

 I've started an organization down here that I got a non-profit status so that I can help the girls, and train them, and teach them how to negotiate through this world and the society and maintain some modicum of safety and strength and resilience, so that we can resist the bullshit and rebel against the crap that is holding us down. We used to accept this crap of: We're not worthy, and, We shouldn't exist, like this government is trying to push down our throats. We've got to revolt, and we’ve got to reclaim who the fuck we are and let these people realize, before they came along, we were honored and worshipped and appreciated and adored. If this world is going to get its act together, they have to support and put in the front to lead this revolution the people who are the most oppressed, which is my Black transgender community.
[…]
We can do so many productive things with anger and really be propelled in the face of injustice. The base of your politic is love, which is such an incredible gift to our community and to the entire world. Our opposition is fueled by a combination of anger and hate, though.

One of the things that my grandmother told me is: “Hate is like quicksand.” It's all-consuming. Once you get involved with that, it's going to suck you in and envelop you. We have to give people the room to be who they are, the courage to change and alter and grow. It’s kind of like plants: You gotta give it sun and water and let it develop as it needs to. Don't tie it down and make it grow the way you want. When I look at bonsai trees, they're so pretty to look at, but it's so hurtful to think of what we've done to them. We’ve done and stopped them from being what their full potential could be. I think of our community when I see them. Some of them adjust and look happy—they're pretty to look at. And some of them feel sad to me. I’ve even cried, child. It’s just like, Goddammit, Major, you big mush.

I love her analogy with the bonsai trees, when you realize that a bonsai tree is a tree that has been cut back and its growth stunted, isn’t that like a trans child who isn’t allowed to transition? Their growth is stunted and not allowed to reach their full potential?

In another interview Sylvia Rivera said,

Racism was central to the story of Stonewall; Rivera characterized the Stonewall Inn as “a white male bar for middle-class males to pick up young boys of different races.”

Never forget… we will not be erased!

*I love their use of "uprising"instead of "riot." They were fighting for their rights and rebelling against the oppression.